Cancel culture

Dear Editor,

Thank you for the article in the May 2021 ‘How should we respond edition of en, to “cancel culture”?’ by John Stevens. I appreciate that in a short article only one aspect can be explored, and he primarily dealt with the negatives of the past in patterns of behaviour that fall short of Biblical norms and generally-held moral standards.

May I encourage John to write a similar piece which points to a response to ‘cancel culture’ which draws attention to the good things in the past. He made brief mention of this in his Churchill reference: ‘He celebrates the contribution individuals made to the progress of human civilisation’.

What my wife and I find so overlooked by the proponents of ‘cancel culture’, and lacking in so much media attention to it, is any interest in positive contributions by those individuals or institutions being castigated. Allow me to give you an example of how this affects the average person. My wife’s hairdresser is a typical secular person and he was stunned when she expressed appreciation of much that British rule had done for Ghana where she was born and brought up. He had simply never met up with such appreciation. She mentioned her education in particular.

Looking at the positive raises issues of God’s providence in the improvement of cultures as well as the influence of the gospel, both of which promote humility and neutralise, for example, racism. It would be good to explore those themes to help en readers in their response to ‘cancel culture’.

Yours sincerely,
Paul Morris Newbury